Internet Lentils

On our first night of vegan week, brought to you by Thug Kitchen, I attempted White Bean and Red Lentil Burgers. I have made their Smokey Bean and Spinach Sliders before and they are da bomb. Best veggie burger I have ever had. Saying that about my own cooking is a little cray, but I think it’s the liquid smoke in that recipe that makes it the best thing since sliced bread.

Now I’m not going to give the recipe away here, even though I saw some bloggers online writing it out. Ya’ll should probably buy their damn cookbook like they intended so you can smell the dead trees that mother nature paid for. Let’s go over the highlights. Keep in mind that my husband and the cookbook have tried to drill in my head that I need all of the ingredients and the correct ingredients at that.

15 ingredients total, I messed up 5 of them.

Ingredient #1: Red lentils.
Firstly, I have never heard of or had a lentil in my lifetime. My trusty friend Aaron tells me they’ll be near the rice. Ok, that sounds like something I can handle. I picked out a bag that says “lentil”, seems like the right thing to do. Later I find out that there are multiple types of lentils and I definitely picked up brown instead of red. But it’s all got to be the same, right? I mean, rice generally cooks the same in the rice maker, so why wouldn’t lentils? I’ll just follow the recipe (and not the bag) on how to cook them and call it a day. Hmm. These little fuckers are hard. Am I sure they’re done? It’s not like I’m cooking chicken or any sort of meat, so it shouldn’t really matter? Sure, yeah, whatever, moving on to the next step.

Ingredient #2: Jalapeno, minced.
I omitted the jalapeño because fuck that, that’s scary. Ever been in a knife fight with a jalapeño? Shit ain’t fun.

Ingredient #3: Red Onion.
I totally forgot to pick one of these up because we were in the produce isle for 100 goddamn hours trying to pick everything out for the week and couldn’t get the damn produce bags open. So I gave the fuck up.

Ingredient #4: Your favorite no-salt, all-purpose seasoning blend.
What the actual fuck does this mean? Again, my trusty friend Aaron to the rescue, explains to me how this works. Never heard of such a thing. I have some Italian seasoning, does that work? When I went to the store, apparently they had never heard of such a thing either. Why would I even have a favorite seasoning? My favorite seasoning is bland AF, do ya got that, grocery store?! Thinking you’re all smart with your alphabetical order seasonings. Why don’t you go hang out with some CDs, another alphabetical, takes up too much awkward space in my house, infectious breed of junk. Fuck it, let’s use oregano, it brings all the boys to the yard. I need a milkshake break at this point.

Ingredient #5: Zest of a lime.
Seems like a goddamn waste to buy this little fruit just to tear its skin up for the sake of a few flavor bits. Fuck it.

I will say that cooking all of the ingredients and forming them into burgers wasn’t too earth shattering. I was thinking, alright, not too shabby, gonna cook up these burgers and then chow down. Boy was I wrong…

As someone who has never had a lentil before, I didn’t think twice about the lentils being so hard. Until Joe pointed out that some of them were impossible to bite into. I then did something you’re never supposed to do when cooking, feeling sick, or making a website (only 2 of those are correct in this statement). I googled about lentils. Turns out, red lentils cook way faster, thus the recipe calling for them and describing a short cooking time. And the brown lentils I used take for fucking ever to cook. I go on to read that eating the uncooked lentils can give you severe abdominal pain.

Do. Not. Want. Stop Eating. Now. I start texting all my friends, HALP 911 LENTIL EMERGENCY. While my friends agreed that the lentils were not cooked, they said I would be fine eating it. I got too scared, like I always do, and stopped eating it. While Joe ate the whole damn thing and lived a happy healthy life.

That’s the last time I ask Stack Overflow about lentils.

On the real though, I’m going to make these again, and make them the right way. It was a very different flavor profile for us and I was excited about that. The few bites I did try were damn delicious despite my oversights.